We're just a few days away from the start of the IMPACT Conference, and good news continues to trickle in. We passed the 900-registrant mark yesterday, finished up the printed program yesterday, confirmed all of our keynote speakers, assembled an incredible array of workshops, and are honored to be joined by over 40 nonprofit sponsors. This is all great, but the fact that it's all been fueled by the energy of committed volunteers across the country is what's really blowing my mind right now. Let me give a few examples:
- A student and an AmeriCorps*VISTA member led the outreach effort. Neither have ever done outreach on this scale before, yet they managed to lead the way to draw over 900 people together in one place to talk about how we can all build a better and more just world.
- A student has pulled together both issue-based and geographically-based affinity groups for the weekend, finding facilitators, organizing the groups, preparing facilitation guides, and dreaming up how we can help these groups not only stay in touch after the conference, but also create action plans so that IMPACT attendees across the country can stay connected.
- A campus staff member and a nonprofit professional (both long-time participants in this conference) managed the process of reviewing over 100 workshop proposals, notifying people about their workshop status, scheduling those workshops, answering questions from all the presenters, and calling each one individually to make sure they're squared away. In their spare time.
- A graduate student has built a great website for us, set up this blog, thought ahead to how we can help people stay connected through the site after the conference, and volunteered to interview folks at the conference to capture a bit of their experience to share with everyone when we all return home.
- A recent graduate and now DC-area intern has been at the helm of all things related to sponsorship, securing over 40 organizations to help us cover the costs of the conference, organizing those organizations' information and websites and logos and travel plans and questions, and overall been a champion of this conference in every shape and form.
The funny thing is that these few folks are joined by 20 others on the Planning Committee who have pitched in their time, energy, vision, and sweat to make this conference possible. The unifying theme among all of us -- and the reason why we've been willing to volunteer our time -- is that we all fervently believe that young people can change the world. That seems like a cliche thing to say, but it's deeply true...we all believe that, if we just provide the platform and get a wide variety of people in the room together, really good things will happen.
We hope they do, and we hope that you (the reader) will come away from the conference renewed in your work to do just that. We'll have more updates (and more bloggers!) over the next few days, but take some time to think about what you want to get out of the conference, who you want to meet with there, and how you can leave the weekend with a plan for creating real change on your campus and in your community. We're all waiting to see what you come up with!
- Heather Cronk, Conference Planning Committee Co-Chair
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